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Broadway Danny Rose

★★★★★

Compared with the vast numbers of scary Halloween movies and cheerful
Christmas movies, there really aren’t that many Thanksgiving movies, and
then most of those are currently not streaming on Netflix. Two, Alice’s
Restaurant (1969) and The House of Yes (1997), are available, and What’s
Cooking? (2000) is coming soon, but my pick is Woody Allen’s great,
black-and-white Broadway Danny Rose (1984). Allen plays the title
character, a third-rate talent agent who represents a troublesome singer (Nick
Apollo Forte) with an even more troublesome girlfriend (Mia Farrow, in
one of her best performances). Eventually Woody and Mia (above) are chased all
over by gangsters. How is it a Thanksgiving movie? In one scene, they
duck into a warehouse filled with dormant floats from the Macy’s
Thanksgiving Day Parade. In this context, these huge, lifeless
characters have a strange otherworldly quality.

Rocky

Rocky

★★★★☆

The Thanksgiving scene in the much-loved Oscar-winning Rocky (1976) is a
thwarted one; Paulie (Burt Young) brings Rocky home for the holiday
dinner, where his sister Adrian (Talia Shire) is unprepared for company.
Brother and sister fight. Paulie pulls her turkey out of the oven
and throws it away, thereby indirectly sending Rocky and Adrian on their
first date together, at an ice rink. It may not include stuffing and
cranberry sauce, but it’s one of the loveliest, most awkward, most
tender first date scenes ever filmed.

Hugo

Hugo (new 11/24)

★★★★★

Another Thanksgiving tradition is to go out to theaters to catch some of
the year’s biggest movies, which traditionally open on Wednesday of that
week. Rather than bothering with the hustle-bustle of this year’s
blockbusters, why not check out some earlier ones? Martin Scorsese’s
Hugo was a Thanksgiving treat last year, and one of 2011’s very best
films. An orphan boy (Asa Butterfield) lives in a Paris train station
and maintains the giant clocks there. He meets a mysterious old man (Ben
Kingsley) who runs a magic shop and eventually discovers,
breathtakingly, that he’s actually a forgotten filmmaker, Georges
Méliès. Unlike The Artist—which beat out Hugo for a Best Picture
Oscar—this one genuinely considers the power and passion of silent
cinema.

The King’s Speech

The King’s Speech (new 11/25)

★★★☆☆

Another Thanksgiving release was the unchallenging but ultimately very
pleasing The King’s Speech (2010), a biopic of King George VI (Colin
Firth), and his attempts to overcome his speech impediment. Geoffrey
Rush steals the film as his eccentric and theatrical speech teacher. The
nicely directed climax contains perhaps the most nail-biting recitation
of a speech in movie history. The movie won a bunch of Oscars, including
Best Picture.

Kings of Pastry

Kings of Pastry

★★★☆☆

Of course, one of our great Thanksgiving traditions is eating, so
perhaps some good food movies might be in order. Chris Hegedus and D.A.
Pennebaker’s light-as-air Kings of Pastry (2009) centers on a harrowing
pastry competition in France. Chefs have three days to create a series
of chocolates and cookies, and—most nail-bitingly—towering,
fragile sugar sculptures. Veteran husband-and-wife team Hegedus and
Pennebaker focus on the chefs and their families, and even occasionally
take a peek at more ordinary treats that people can actually eat.

Woman on Top

Woman on Top

★★★☆☆

Honestly, Fina Torres’ Woman on Top (2000) isn’t very good, but if
you’re sitting on the couch in a food coma, it’s just lovely and
lightweight enough to pass the time pleasantly. Penelope Cruz is one
good reason to see it; she plays a master chef with motion sickness,
working in a restaurant in Brazil. When her husband cheats on her, she
moves to California, where, with the help of a drag queen (Harold
Perrineau Jr.), she becomes the star of a cooking show. Along with the
enchanting Ms. Cruz, the luscious food, Brazilian music, and San
Francisco locations make this one a sigh-worthy affair, and one that
almost overcomes its silly plot.

The Cotton Club

★★★★☆

Another Thanksgiving tradition is the turkey, which in this case means a
film that’s either astoundingly terrible or lost a ton of money, or
both. Some major money losers, however, were simply the victims of bad
timing, or a changing of public mood. The troubled production of Francis
Ford Coppola’s The Cotton Club (1984) was widely reported, and by the
time it opened, it was already dead in the water. But in reality it’s a
terrific movie, with a great look, great music, and that kind of
masterly risk and intelligence that define Coppola’s best movies. Richard Gere, Gregory Hines, and Diane Lane star.

The Warrior’s Way

The Warrior’s Way

★★★☆☆

The Warrior’s Way (2010) is a kind of martial arts Western (maybe the only martial arts Western), with a
Korean director (Sngmoo Lee) and leading actor (Jang Dong-gun), but shot
in English and with a supporting cast of recognizable Hollywood actors: Geoffrey Rush, Kate Bosworth, Danny Huston, and Tony
Cox. Despite its slick action, picturesque cinematography, and
lighthearted mood, audiences did not care. The movie cost about $42
million and lost about $31 million. For another “turkey” Western, see
also Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (1980), but see it at your own risk.

The Longest Yard

★★★★☆

One more Thanksgiving tradition is, of course, football. Several
football documentaries, like Go Tigers! (2001) and Harvard Beats Yale
29-29 (2008) are available streaming, but we prefer Robert Aldrich’s
dark, brutal football comedy The Longest Yard (1974). Burt Reynolds
stars as a former NFL player, now in prison. He is tapped to recruit a
team of prisoners—dubbed the “Mean Machine”—to play a game against
the guards. Aldrich balances a kind of ferocious worldview with a
rambunctious audience appeal, helped immeasurably by Reynolds’
devil-may-care performance. Eddie Albert is superb as the Nixon-like
warden. Future James Bond villain Richard Kiel (aka Jaws) plays one of the
prisoners.

Take This Waltz

Take This Waltz (new 11/23)

★★★★★

Finally, if you’re tired of Thanksgiving altogether and simply want to
see one of the year’s best movies, you could do worse than Sarah
Polley’s outstanding, heart-rending Take This Waltz (2012). Michelle
Williams gives another in a series of exemplary performances as Margot,
a writer who is happily married to chef Lou (Seth Rogen). On a business
trip, she meets a neighbor, Daniel (Luke Kirby), and they become
inexorably attracted to one another. Polley’s film explores this
attraction in all its wonders, passions, and cold realities. Sarah
Silverman co-stars in a potent supporting role.

What’s new

The Hole (11/25)

The Invisible War (11/21)

Like Crazy (11/17)

Re-Animator

Silent House (11/21)

What’s Cooking? (12/1)

Expiring soon

Nenette (11/24)

Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow (11/17)

[Streaming movies and TV shows—on services such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Instant Videos—are ephemeral: Here one day, gone the next. The purpose of the Now Streaming series is to alert you to what movies and shows are new to streaming, what you might want to watch before it disappears, and other treasures that are worth checking out.]

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Jeffrey has been a working film critic for more than 14 years. He first fell in love with the movies at age six while watching "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" and served as staff critic for the San Francisco Examiner from 2000 through 2003.